[157] See p. 25.
[158] A similar principle applied to the prohibition of such species as the mouse or the weasel, not only because they destroyed everything, but because the latter, from its mode of conceiving and bearing, symbolized listening to evil tales, and exaggerated, lying, or malicious speech.
[159] Of course this method is constantly adopted by Josephus. Comp. for example, Ant. iii. 1. 6; 7. 7.
[160] Or Dorshey Chamuroth, searchers of difficult passages. Zunz. Gottesd. Vortr. p. 323. note b.
[161] Ps. lxii. 11; Sanh. 34 a.
[162] The seventy languages in which the Law was supposed to have been written below Mount Ebal (Sotah vii. 5). I cannot help feeling this may in part also refer to the various modes of interpreting Holy Scripture, and that there is an allusion to this Shabb. 88 b, where Ps. lxviii. 12. and Jer. xxiii. 29, are quoted, the latter to show that the word of God is like a hammer that breaks the rock in a thousand pieces. Comp. Rashi on Gen. xxxiii. 20.
[163] Perhaps we ought here to point out one of the most important principles of Rabbinism, which has been almost entirely overlooked in modern criticism of the Talmud. It is this: that any ordinance, not only of the Divine law, but of the Rabbis, even though only given for a particular time or occasion, or for a special reason, remains in full force for all time unless it be expressly recalled (Betsah 5 b). Thus Maimonides (Sepher ha Mitsv.) declares the law to extirpate the Canaanites as continuing in its obligations. The inferences as to the perpetual obligation, not only of the ceremonial law, but of sacrifices, will be obvious, and their bearing on the Jewish controversy need not be explained. Comp. Chief Rabbi Holdheim. d. Ceremonial Gesetz in Messasreich, 1845.
[164] About 160 b.c.
[165] Præpar. Evang. vii. 14. 1 ; vii. 10. 1-17; xiii. 12.
[166] As Val. Kenaer puts it, Daitr. de Aristob. Jud. p. 73.
[167] 4 Esdras xiv. 44, 46.
[168] Rom. xiii. 11.
[169] The kairs of St. Paul seems here used in exactly the same sense as in later Hebrew {hebrew}. The Septuagint renders it so in five passages (Ezr. 5:3; Dan. 4:33; 6:10; 7:22, 25).
[170] Of course, it suits Jewish, writers, like Dr. Jost, to deprecate the value of the Pseudepigrapha. Their ardour of expectancy ill agrees with the modern theories, which would eliminate, if possible, the Messianic hope from ancient Judaism.
[171] Comp. Dillmann in Herzog's Real-Encykl. vol. xii. p. 301.
[172] For a brief review of the Pseudepigraphic Writings,' see Appendix I. __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER IV. PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA, THE RABBIS, AND THE GOSPELS - THE FINAL DEVELOPMENT OF HELLENISM IN ITS RELATION TO RABBINISM AND THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN.
It is strange how little we know of the personal history of the greatest of uninspired Jewish writers of old, though he occupied so prominent a position in his time. [173] Philo was born in Alexandria, about the year 20 before Christ. He was a descendant of Aaron, and belonged to one of the wealthiest and most influential families among the Jewish merchant-princes of Egypt. His brother was the political head of that community in Alexandria, and he himself on one occasion represented his co-religionists, though unsuccessfully, at Rome, [174] as the head of an embassy to entreat the Emperior Caligula for protection from the persecutions consequent on the Jewish resistance to placing statues of the Emperor in their Synagogues. But it is not with Philo, the wealthy aristocratic Jew of Alexandria, but with the great writer and thinker who, so to speak, completed Jewish Hellenism, that we have here to do. Let us see what was his relation alike to heathen philosophy and to the Jewish faith, of both of which he was the ardent advocate, and how in his system he combined the teaching of the two.